A new strain of computer malware infecting payment card terminals in restaurant and gas station has compromised nearly 700 credit cards in Canada, a computer security firm says.

The viral code, JackPOS, infects point-of-sales terminals, a security breach similar to other highly publicized recent cases that struck victims such as the Target retailing chain or the White Lodging hotel management firm

According to a map released Monday by the California security firm IntelCrawler LLC, JackPOS stole data from 400 cards in Vancouver and from 280 other cards at a location in Longueuil, Que., south of Montreal.

IntelCrawler said the infection appeared about three weeks ago.

In an e-mail to The Globe and Mail, IntelCrawler CEO Andrew Komarov said the point-of-sales terminals were breached through remote access, by hackers who created a large list of possible passwords (such as POS1, Administrator or 123456789) and then “brute-forced” themselves into the systems.